The Document Foundation has released LibreOffice 4.2 today, which "features a large number of performance and interoperability improvements targeted to users of all kinds, but particularly appealing for power and enterprise users".

The new version brings better interoperability with Microsoft OOXML, a new monochrome icon set (not enabled by default), GNOME 3 Application Menu integration and more.

Here's a list of the most important changes in the latest LibreOffice 4.2:

round-trip interoperability with Microsoft OOXML, particularly for DOCX, as well as legacy RTF, has improved considerably;

a new import filter for Abiword documents has been added;

improvements to other import/export filters;

a new engine for Calc - massive parallel calculations of formula cells using GPU via OpenCL are now possible thanks to the new formular interpreter;

better integration with Windows 7 and 8, with thumbnails of open documents now grouped by application and a list of recent documents, both showing on the task bar, along with other Windows-specific improvements;

power and enterprise users on all platforms will like the new Expert Configuration window, which has been added to the Options tab;

new start screen with a cleaner layout that makes better use of the available space - even on netbooks - and shows a preview of the last ODF documents;

Writer: A New default template;

GNOME3 Application Menu integration;

support MATE and XFCE Desktops (native Open/Save dialogs);

a new set of icons has been included in LibreOffice 4.2. This icon set, named Sifr, was designed to reach the goal of having beautiful non-distracting icons to help the user concentrate on the document;

GNOME 3 Application Menu integration

LibreOffice Sifr icon theme (not enabled by default)

New LibreOffice start screen

Of course, there are many other changes - for a complete list, see the official release announcement.

LibreOffice 4.2 in Ubuntu

Ubuntu 14.04: LibreOffice 4.2 is already available in the official Trusty Proposed repositories.

Ubuntu 13.10 and 12.04: LibreOffice 4.2 is available in the LibreOffice PPA.

Other Ubuntu versions: LibreOffice 4.2 can only be installed by downloading it from its website.

For those who are using Ubuntu 14.04 or have installed LibreOffice 4.2 from a PPA, if you want to use the new Sift icon theme, you must firstly install it:

sudo apt-get install libreoffice-style-sifr

And then to activate it, from the LibreOffice menu select Tools > Options > LibreOffic > View and select "Sift" under "Icon size and style":